Captain's Log 27: May Mega-Update

Ahoy Pathfinders!

Now that the flux of development related to ATLAS 1.5 has settled, we have made a return to our regularly scheduled patches to address stability, bugs, and balance whilst we prepare our next Mega-Update. This is a good time to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring ATLAS continues moving towards its ambition of becoming the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure. This Captain's Log will give you a sneak preview of what we're currently working on for our May Mega Patch whilst maintaining the live game on the side.

livestream!

But before we get into that... save the date, as next Friday, the 3rd of May at 2 PM PT we’ll be live streaming some of our upcoming content and revealing more details about the next Mega-Update!

The stream will be hosted on both Twitch and Mixer, so be sure to tune in!

We’ll also be collecting questions from the community which we’ll be answering live. If you’ve got something on your mind, whether it’s about future development plans, upcoming content, decisions regarding features, or how we feel about Endgame, submit your questions to this thread!

mega-update!

Now that our first large milestone has made it out the door, the team has been working hard on our next major content update. This will include new playable areas, creatures, weapons, items, ship mechanics and more -- much of which we’ll be covering in our upcoming Live Stream!

Please keep in mind that this update is an evolving work-in-progress and thus, isn’t set in stone. This means that it’s open to change, whether it’s the visual appearance or the actual intended gameplay purpose it serves.

But without further ado, here’s a little peek of the content to come!

Icebox

A high insulation box for transporting ice! Can be used to reduce surrounding temperature, extend the spoil time of perishables, and quench your thirst -- assuming it’s fully stocked.

Spear Gun

An underwater weapon that players can use to launch a piercing spearbolt with power and accuracy.

Torpedo

An underwater missile fired from a torpedo launcher (snapped to gunports), which can be aimed down into the ocean to destroy structures built underwater, or shot across the water surface (cannot travel or be shot above the water surface).

This Mega-Update will be loaded with new features and content and we’re excited to get it into your hands. There’s a lot to come with it and even more planned for the months ahead which we will be displaying and discussing in the stream next week. As always, thank you very much for all of your feedback and reports; this community is very involved and passionate and you guys directly facilitate the evolution and development of ATLAS along with our ability to address issues and bugs.

iso: Blackwood

In early June we expect to be able to release our special mod-map, Blackwood, created by Iso, the level designer behind ARK’s popular mod-map Crystal Isles. This is not something we’ll be supporting specifically on our Official Network, as it was designed and intended to be used for single servers an example of a stunning mod map that can be hosted unofficially. This specific map will be set up so that you can still enjoy all the mechanics that ATLAS has to offer, whilst hosting it as a standalone server with no additional database setup required!

patch roundup!

The community’s contributions throughout early access, whether that’s bug reports, feedback on features, and content suggestion have been highly helpful in ATLAS’ development. Thanks to your reports, we were able to identify and resolve one of our more frequent server crashes. Additionally, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the core technical aspect of the game and have significantly optimized crew attached to stations, movement on ships, and resolved some outstanding bugs.

The effect on our servers after eliminating that crash. The dip you see on Wednesday and Early Thursday was because we had temporarily disabled a feature which had a high chance of causing the crash and then further dropped Late Thursday onward after we fixed the issue and re-enabled the feature. We couldn’t have done it without your report, so please keep them coming!

Please have a read through of our guidelines thread to help us get all the information we need:

And we’re currently collating information regarding ‘vanishing’ structure pieces, so if you’ve experienced it please post a response in this thread with any information that you can provide, we’ve included a guideline that’ll help us identify the problem.

Patch notes up to v102.45

- Fixed issue where tames could be given move-onto-ship points that were outside the bounds of the ship, or nearly outside.
- Fixed issue where tames could potentially fall endlessly and drown when moving-onto-ship.
v102.4
- Fixed a server crash
- Re-enabled Red Alert and the ability to return the crew to their previous seat following a Red Alert (can be activated using Right Shift) on Official Servers
v102.38
- Fixed creature "drift" on ships for client
- Fixed issue where creatures could disappear or erroneously die in some cases when moved onto ships, re-enabled move to ship functionality for Officials.
- Added cooldowns to activate or reset Red Alert state (clients get a corresponding message onscreen when they try to execute the order during the cooldowns).
- Fixed issue where crew melee swings on ships couldn't hit their targets.
- Red Alert temporarily disabled on Official Servers whilst we investigate an issue related to its stability.
v102.1
- Hand Harvesting Skills now affect tool usage as well.
- Fixed Climbing Picks sometimes sending the player off into infinity.
- Ended the Easter Event. Bunny hat skin applications and skinned items will still exist.
- Significantly optimized the networking of character movement on ships.
- Fixed a bug where you couldn't see another player turning their character on a ship if they weren't moving.
- Fixed a server crash.
- Fixed issue with resources not respawning near shipyards/docks.
- Fixed an issue where mortars and lighthouses may not have had their activity tags updated properly.
- Fixed issue that would cause characters (including creatures) based on a ship to "drift" off the ship over time.
v101.32
- Possible fix for shoulder creatures disappearing or flickering post-transition.
- Placed Water Reservoirs will now show their water richness percentage on the HUD.
- Water Reservoirs will now gain water from rain.
- Fixed Treasure Maps generating locations stuck in the world. Will not effect existing Treasure Maps.
- Empires PvE mode will now have a 2 week declaim tag period of claim flags (was previously 6 hours for test purposes).
- Disabled 'Move To Ship' pinwheel action for non-crew tames on Official Servers until we have resolved issues related to the feature.
- Fixed Island Points totals getting de-synced/displaying incorrectly for Companies.

and you can check out our entire Patch List since release, here:

SHOW 'N' TELL #7

We’re still collecting entries for the Show ‘n Tell! So you have a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fan art or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

User Feedback

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Torpedos? Thats something I havent expected in a pirate game. How about some more "pirate" related content? When can we start building the Nautilus? Well im curious what other surprises wait for us in the may-mega-update.

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Very cool team! Looking forward to the May update. The concepts look great and the iso map looks beautiful. I’m looking forward to some underwater combat aswell. The bow and melee gear works fine but I’m sure a spear gun will add to pve/PvP options for players.

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It's a really smart idea to have ISO make such a very specific map but it sadly also puts everyone working on the official network maps to shame.
She's such an incredible artist. Every screenshot you've shown of the map makes me want to play Atlas but then I log in and am greeted with dull island designs. No amazing landmarks and I lose interest immediately. Nothing interesting to explore. Until you update your maps, which you've promised to do but we'll see. "things can change" as you say yourself.

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A torpedo to destroy underwater structures would mean we also should be able to build the first underwater structures.
I like to see how the underwater playfield and the surface ships are "separated" so both have their own balance and dont interfere too much with the others to make them obsolete.

Maybe we soon also see the first airship so the technical work on the flight mechanic and handling of floating island can begin.

Thou i hope we get low tech variants of the subs and any future additions to craft and unlock with skill points, so we can move into these new areas if we learn the corresponding skills. Also it would be great if we could at least craft the traditional figurehead from wood to make the ships that dont use the gold purchases look better.

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If I read correctly, a change in the PVE flag mechanics is not planned, so many forum entries that criticize the current PVE flag system will be ignored.so it makes no sense for me to continue playing this game and I will leave it.thanks for nothing

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It would be very nice if you devs would try and keep the game a little bit true to the era. Is this game really just gonna turn into Ark 2? I'm sure a lot of us would prefer pirate related content. Anything else takes away from the immersion. How about keeping that stuff set aside for a dlc so everyone is not forced to play with it.

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It would be very nice if you devs would try and keep the game a little bit true to the era. Is this game really just gonna turn into Ark 2? I'm sure a lot of us would prefer pirate related content. Anything else takes away from the immersion. How about keeping that stuff set aside for a dlc so everyone is not forced to play with it.

Which era is pirate fantasy in again? I dont remember hydras, powerstones and kraken in history books.

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Would it be possible to change SotD AI to not have amiable cannons? Right now they all hit the same plank. Other solutions is to make planks larger. A brig takes 40 planks...reduce that to 20 by combining the health of the planks together and double the area they cover. As is everyone puts cannons off the back and kills SotD that way because broadside fire is a death sentence if you dont have 40 planks with you.

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We need to see actual ambient temp, not what it is outside... With temp so important to raising tames we need to know what our positions temp is. Current tells you local insulation values but temp is not adjusted based on player proximity to heat sources.

a feels like 78 degrees would be wonderful

Edited April 29, 2019 by Skinner NA PVE

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Sails. Please make them all percentages of the ship design. Flat rate on weight sails make them non viable. Make handling sails have a turn radius decrease modifier in addition to wind angle, Make weight sails a percentage of ships max weight. All sail blueprints should have these modifiers visible with RNG focused on the design of the sail but a chance to get a decent roll on other. Very few variants of ships out there because current meta has us locked in.